The present invention relates to the field of wireless and wireline telephony. It finds particular application in conjunction with automatically routing incoming telephone calls to a subscriber based primarily on the subscriber's location, and will be described with reference thereto.
Telephone call routing systems are known that sequence through a list of subscriber-specified telephone numbers in response to receiving an incoming call. Typically, these systems operate by providing subscribers a new telephone number, hereafter referred to as a `reach number`. Each subscriber conveys his reach number to callers as his only telephone number. When a call is directed to a subscriber's reach number, telephone equipment routes the call to pre-stored, subscriber-specified telephone numbers. As an example, if a subscriber lists in order, a home phone, an office phone, a mobile phone, and a pager, the system will ring the telephone numbers in the order predetermined by the subscriber for a number of rings. The subscriber can also manually interact with this system in order to change the sequencing order of the listed telephone numbers or manage the list by adding and deleting numbers.
Unfortunately, such systems are only as dependable as the subscribers are diligent in maintaining their personal telephone number lists. In addition, if a subscriber is away from all the telephones on his list, he will not receive calls since such systems sequence only through subscriber-supplied telephone numbers. Moreover, each subscriber is typically allowed to specify only a small number of telephone numbers on his list. And, of course, a subscriber can list only those telephone numbers that he knows.
Other systems are known for locating and directing calls to people inside of larger structures with a number of telephones. Typically a caller calls a central number and interacts with a live or automated operator to identify the desired called party. Such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,548,637; 5,155,761; 5,062,151. These systems undesirably only work within the building and with building telephone equipment.